Packers versus Bears – better to see it on TV

Crazy ticket prices! You could buy 4 and then put your kids through college. Seats for this Sunday’s clash between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game at Soldier Field are easily the most in-demand tickets in Chicago sportshistory, several ticket brokers said today. The worst seats in the upper reaches of the stadium, with a face value of $134 for Sunday’s game, are selling for about $500 each on the secondary market, according to brokers and several ticket resale websites. Decent seats in the stadium’s lower levels are selling for at least $1,500 to $2,000 per ticket, said Melissa Janes, who works for a Chicago-area ticket broker.

“This is what the market is, so if you want to go, you’re going to have to take out a small loan or use your mortgage payment,” said Janes, who said Chicago hasn’t seen such demand for sports tickets since Michael Jordan was leading the Bulls to six NBA titles in the 1990s. Richard Fitzwell, another Chicago-area ticket broker, said demand for tickets to Sunday’s game is bigger than the demand for tickets during the Blackhawks’ run to the Stanley Cup last year or the Cubs’ 2003 National League Championship Series against the Florida Marlins. “Prices are definitely out of control,” Fitzwell said. “Just by looking at the market right now, you’re talking about $500 a ticket for the worst seat in the house. I’m a Bears fan, and I wouldn’t pay that, would you?”

Sunday’s game – only the second playoff meeting between the Bears and Packers in the 90-year history of the teams’ rivalry – could become the top-selling NFL conference championship game in the history of national ticket reseller StubHub, a company spokeswoman said. StubHub’s Web site has about 4,500 tickets posted for sale for Sunday’s game, starting at $475, spokeswoman Joellen Ferrer said. Over the last 24 hours, tickets on the site have sold for an average of $766, she said. The most expensive ticket sold so far by StubHub was a $2,942 seat in Soldier Field’s United Club, Ferrer said.

For comparison, tickets for next Sunday’s AFC Championship game between the New York Jets and Pittsburgh Steelers are selling for an average of $405 on StubHub, Ferrer said. Tickets to last year’s Stanley Cup games between the Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers in Chicago sold for an average of $800 to $900 on StubHub, but comparing those games to Sunday’s NFC title game is difficult because the Blackhawks and Flyers played three games in Chicago during the series, Ferrer said.

Some tickets for the Bears-Packers game are posted for as much as $9,500 each on StubHub, but Ferrer said those prices will almost certainly drop as the market settles this week. In fact, Ferrer said she expects prices on the secondary market to gradually drop as the week goes on, with the final average ticket price on StubHub probably somewhere between $700 and $800.